My younger brother has just become a CMA and started his path towards becoming a CFA. In order to make his life easier, he needed a specific financial calculator that he couldn't find anywhere in Damascus. He called and asked for my help. Five minutes later I was checking amazon.com and 4 days later the FedEx guy knocked on my door and handed it to me. It looks very primitive, probably like the calculators that were used to do the calculations needed to build the pyramids few billions of years ago! Anyway, I contacted DHL and their guy come and picked it up after I filled the form with my family's home address in Damascus. "To this destination, it'll takes five business days" he said.
Five days passed and nothing happened. I didn't bother to track it online...I was just expecting a call from my brother to thank me. 8 days
and that ungrateful nerd hasn't called yet! I decided to see the DHL tracker before I call and teach him some manners, of which he has much more than I do in fact. Apparently, the calculator never left the USA! I was told that it was deemed as an unacceptable commodity to be sent to Syria by the US customs!
I'm not an expert in making nuclear bombs but my common sense tells me that this type of calculators, or any other type for that matter, is not essential to the process! Unless it's needed to calculate the depletion rate of the uranium or maybe the amortization expenses of the trucks that will be used to carry the bomb! This was the most ridiculous thing I have heard since an American border control officer in JFK airport in New York asked me upon my arrival from Damascus, after looking at my SYRIAN passport, why I had been to Syria!
Probably that customs officer who made the decision of holding that "unacceptable commodity" is the blood brother of the border
control officer, I wouldn't be surprised! At the end of a long business day at the US customs, he goes home to his wife and kids
and tells them how he has prevented the bad people from acquiring "tools" that would have been used in evil matters! He will be
a hero....but no one will stop for a second and think...ummm...a calculator!
Come on Americans! Think before you say things of act on things!
On a different perspective.... Why did we have to go through the US customs in the first place? Oh yeah, because we couldn't get that stupid calculator in Syria!
Here is the "unacceptable commodity"
